An unmanned aerial vehicle (“UAV”) (also known as a remotely piloted vehicle (“RPV”) or unmanned aircraft system (“UAS”)) is an aircraft that flies without a human crew on board the aircraft. A UAV is capable of controlled, sustained, level flight and is powered by a jet engine, reciprocating engine, or electric motor.
For UAVs, unique airborne payloads were previously designed for each government furnished equipment (GFE), customer or application specific system during integration. The airborne payloads were unique with respect to the customer payload equipment, the communications system, and the UAV platform used for integration. This design methodology limited component reuse, increased build complexity, and generally required longer development cycles.
Specifically, UAV payloads were previously designed for a particular UAV platform based on specific mission objectives and concept of operations (CONOPS). The size, weight, and power requirements of the UAV platform were the main system requirements that drove the payload design. After a payload was developed for a given set of sensor equipment, communications system, and for a particular platform; reuse of that payload on other platforms required extensive redesign or added size, weight, and power to adapt the payload to new platforms. Above all, the added size, weight, and power to adapt previous payload designs to new platforms is a serious detriment to the UAV's mission performance because it can greatly reduce a number of important operating characteristics such as, time on station, maximum altitude and range, safe operating conditions, and the like.
Drawbacks of the existing approach included: 1) reduced UAV mission performance due to added size, weight, and power required for payload integration; 2) payload designs could not easily address the mechanical and electrical interfaces of multiple vehicles simultaneously; 3) new requirements (sensor, communications, platform) typically drove a new payload design; 4) time and cost for payload design modifications were high; 5 payloads were not easily field repairable due to construction; 6) reuse between different platforms was limited or non-existent in some cases; 7) payloads were bulky in size and weight when reuse on another platform was possible due to added equipment to adapt to new platforms; 8) payloads did not benefit from overlapping functionality of subsystem components which enable a single design element to perform multiple tasks such as mechanical structure, environmental isolation, thermal conduit, electromagnetic shielding, electrical power conduction, and so on; and 9) payloads could not easily add redundant or multi-channel support through the simple addition of extra layers, but instead had to be specifically re-engineered for the requirements of each project.